If you can't pay a mortgage or feed a family, summers off and pension aren't useful. Teachers don't have equity like many other industries. They pretty much universally don't get bonuses. The mindset that teachers have something that offsets the embarrassingly low salaries that we offer them is the result of decades of politicians trying to justify cutting money from education.
What is the money being spent on? It's hard to get actual data on this down to the granular level of pens and paper. I've read tons of statements that it mostly goes to administrator salaries, various "initiatives" (but how does an initiative cost separate money? never answered) and infrastructure costs. I believe that's likely, but I also haven't seen raw data.
Next question to me is: what actually needs funding? Teacher salaries, sure, easy argument. But then what? What supplies? Books, laptops, projectors, software licenses, crayons, play-doh, stencils, rulers, graph paper, craft paper, what? And how often?
Comparing my elementary school experience 80's to my children's (now); Technology and Curriculum materials are much more prevalent.
I find the use of so many single use materials surprising. Most of the subjects won't have a textbook in the traditional sense, they've a 'math program' that includes a workbook, any number of handouts, worksheets, and often an application or website. Most of my textbooks were from the 60's, we made brown grocery bag bookcovers for them and were expected to return them with minimal wear. While this generates increased reoccurring revenue for the publisher, I'm unconvinced it's an improvement.
What are the lifetime cost differences on chalkboards vs. smartboards or overhead projectors vs digital projectors.
It's not like my kids don't have all the technology at home, chromebooks, tablets, etc. I don't think they need it school too, especially when often all they do with it is the app from the subscription they have in place of a textbook.
The huge increase in infrastructure costs are seriously under-appreciated.
This is an article from 2002 about new schools being built in Baltimore. One for $14M and one for $13M. The article laments how much school construction costs are rising.
That data doesn't look to be adjusted for inflation, no? 1990 dollars are worth essentially half of today's dollars, so those charts don't say very much, even if they only go to 2005.
Edit: it's also the case that the population has grown by 50 million people since 1990, which would bring an expected increase of 15-20% in expenditure. Accounting for both, I'm surprised we don't spend more.
Considering the average pay was about $65k, I'd say that most states seem to have decent pay. That's slightly higher than the average pay in the US, and significantly higher than the median.
My state has good teacher pay. I know someone working as a secondary ed biology teacher making a little more than I do as a dev (about $90k; both of us have masters).
Average isn't a useful metric here because you'd be hard pressed to find an "average" school. Teacher salaries generally don't do a good job of tracking the cost of living. $65k might be a good salary for some parts of America, but if a bigger chunk of those teachers are in dense urban areas with high costs of living (see: the bay area) it's not good at all. It's also not useful if you lump public school teachers in with private school teachers.
If it's not a useful metric, then it seems the article has no support for it's argument about teacher pay. If you also look in the article, it mentions that many of the states with higher costs of living also have significantly higher average pay, while states with lower cost of living have lower pay. It seems to generally track.
Now there could be localized areas that have pay problems, like the bay area. But are these widespread? Or is this a symptom of some underlying problem like locale specific policies or preferences (property taxes, housing prices/zoning/preferences, and the largest income inequality in the country)? Using other anecdotes, like in my area, there doesn't seem to be a problem.
So basically, if we can't use averages, what quantitative evidence is there that teacher pay being low is a widespread problem? Or is it possible that the audience on this forum is used to pay which falls in the top 5-10%, and thus skews the perception of what is "good" pay?
"Teacher salaries generally don't do a good job of tracking the cost of living."
You make this claim, but is there evidence to back that up? Because I don't see it in the article nor the comments.
>$65k might be a good salary for some parts of America, but if a bigger chunk of those teachers are in dense urban areas with high costs of living
Seems like the location of teachers would match the location of workers and children. It seems reasonable to compare the average worker salary to the average teacher's (or public teacher if that is your main interest)
Public school teachers belong to unions and have lifetime pensions. Many of them have their educational loans forgiven after a certain number of years of service.
Not in all states. In my state (North Carolina), teachers participate in the public employees retirement/pension fund. However, public employees are prohibited by law from joining/forming a union.
Yes, the get "summers off", but there are also mandatory continuing education requirements that must be completed, so they're still working (unpaid) during those two months.
Teachers also cannot request a vacation day. If you need to call in sick, you're responsible for securing a substitute (school provides the list of approved people, better start calling them frantically).
Neither of those benefits, if they exist in a state, negate the hardships of a low salary. Thinking of paying off the loan which got you the job as some sort of luxury is wild. We could also just pay them more so loans didn't need to be forgiven.
But this and the previous comment is true for all jobs. How can you compare a job where it takes years and years of dedicated study and very special set of skills and aptitude to match the remuneration of a job that is less valuable and only requires certification?
Can we expect school teachers to be paid as much as a project manager or surgeon? It is not an easy job or an unskilled one, but it is not at par with the more you well paid jobs as well.
Cities want to have a mixed housing and diversity and all kinds of income earning citizens. But then the low wage earning populace start complaining that pay isn’t good enough and wages need to be increased. You can’t have the cake and eat it too. We can create subsidized affordable homes in expensive Ca zip codes but we can’t bring down cost of living…because it’s the high cost of living that supports the rest of the pyramid by way of high cost of goods and services. And taxes. From gas to utilities to restaurants, everything costs more. So those on the lower wages who are subsidized will always have a lag in cost of living no matter what.
It’s all relative. The govt should make infrastructure and basic support systems equal to ALL cities with diverse cost of living index. That’s all we can do in terms of equality.
Completely random google search and this about rural schools : https://hechingerreport.org/rural-schools-have-a-teacher-sho.... [..] “People arrive here, and they can’t deal,” said Kohl of the many teachers who come for a few years but don’t stay. “Yeah, the mountains are beautiful, but they’re nine hours away. If you want to fly anywhere, you drive 325 miles to Billings.”[..] For many reasons, including low pay, isolation and scarcity of housing, hanging on to local talent is an especially acute problem in Montana.[…] you can’t fix isolation and lack of housing with higher pay. This is a govt failing.
How much does tutoring cost? It costs 10-12k per student per annum according to most schools budgets. And most school districts have 10-15k students.
Schools are for social reasons as well as educational. So children can learn from their peers..but consider what is happening in schools. There is violence, guns, bullying and drugs in school. They are becoming political and it’s like rounding up all the impressionables for any kind of indoctrination. Education has become secondary to politics in American schools.
Union negotiated working conditions are worse but pay is higher. Something is utterly rotten with American public education and it’s been this way for the past two decades. It has gotten worse in the last ten years. It might be beyond repair at this point and needs to be dismantled and rebuilt.
> Teachers don't have equity like many other industries.
What "many"? Are there any industries besides software and finance that offer equity compensation?
I had real jobs in a couple fields before I became a coder, and never once did they give me free stocks. I think one company you could use part of your pay check automatically _buy_ their stock at nearly market prices, which would have been a silly thing to do.
Sounds nice as long as things like the pension are actually funded. Not so great if you worked for years of lower pay only to find out that your pension is being cut because your employer didn't put aside as much money as they were supposed to.